Top-Gear hosts incite violence toward a vulnerable minority, and I say go after them

As someone who has been enormously successful in all aspects of life, I can say with some authority, that one must always play hardball with enemies. Among friends and family (and by that I mean, fellow cyclists) we can reveal our good humour. It is better that everyone else fear and loath us. Winning hearts and minds is a fine idea, when you're the one with the weapons. But let us remember, we are unarmed!

I film bad drivers with my iPhone, take the evidence to local police, and make statements to have them fined. Another dad at my kids' school is $1000 poorer now, since I filmed him leaving his car running and double parked outside the school. Well diddums. My recent experience cycling around New York for a little over a week, is that drivers know cyclists are Bolshies, and will go straight to bike lawyers like Rankin & Taylor, if cars even brush them. Let word spread that we have teeth, are psychotic, un-Australian, humourless, and they might actually look for us before turning.

My good friends on Twitter, @billcawte and @Treadlie don't share my combative demeanor, and tell me I should chose my battles. Perhaps they have never had to "deal" with bad neighbours like I have, or been left to supervise itinerant workers there in the Congo, as daddy left me to do when I was 10. Whatever their reasons, my friends on Twitter are soft. I say, we have video evidence of illegal driving, and incitement of same, by the Australian cast members of Top-Gear. We would earn more respect than Kim Jong Il, by going in hard, and publicly calling for them all to be charged. I therefore call for them all to be charged, for driving offenses. Then we'll go after them for inciting violence toward a vulnerable minority.

14 Comments

Presumably they had filming permits and those streets were closed off to normal traffic. But complaints to the police as well as to the television regulators are probably called for regardless of that. Apeing Jeremy Clarkson’s “cyclists should be run over” act is something that isn’t needed in Australia.

I just wrote this to Channel 9
I would like this complaint to be relayed to the producers of the Channel-9 Program Top-Gear. A recent segment making fun of cyclists vilified a vulnerable minority. Of all Australia’s minority groups, only cyclists are killed or injured each day, not often deliberately, but often as a result of the kind of criminal neglect Top-Gear has incited.

so when they’ve lost their licenses, and been jailed for inciting hate crimes against vulnerable minorities (cyclists), we’ll find some way of getting them for not being funny 🙂 Screw them, I say. If they poked fun at people in wheelchairs, or gays, or other races, there would be outrage. As cyclists, we aren’t nearly as prickly as we’re made out to be. It’s time we lived up to their worst expectations. Maybe we could plaster posters around relating their girths to their odds of soon being coronary cases.

an embarrassment to our nation. If it helps at all, I do apologise. Don: let’s you and I host “Big-Chain Ring”… it will be funny, and will make fun of people who drive because they are afraid of a few raindrops and would rather listen to hours of mindless drive-time radio talk-back. And it will cover all aspects of the wide diverse world of human powered transportation

This sort of “lowest common denominator” TV gets me so angry!
Why are we, as a society, blind to all the death and destruction the automobile has caused?
If the car were any other product, it would’ve been banned decades ago.

this makes me really pleased to no longer watch telly. Alright, following pro bike people on twitter might make me one eyed, and less outraged than maybe I should be by media put out for dummies, but at least life is bearable. That was hard to watch, but fricking riveting too. Am guessing that stupid TV show is publicly funded? That would hurt.

when you say, “publicly funded tv”, are you referring to OZ top gear or UK top gear? I’m guessing UK top gear… and yeah, if i was a brit i’d be hopping mad. i do admit to watching their ‘specials’ shows, because they have no agenda other than getting from A to B (and perhaps inciting some redneck or insurgent violence along the way), but the available spend for those has obviously been declining as the years progress…

i was wondering how you’d come across that clip – didn’t pick you for a commercial tv kind of bloke. praps some auntie or even late night soft pr0n sbs (and i don’t mean le tour).

Treadlie magazine posted the link on Twitter. @treadlie These days all my viewing come recommended by twitter and facebook friends. How’s the TV news in Singapore these days? Propaganda is like eating nothing but sugar, I found.